Figment
by Quinnzical
Summary: Molly Hooper often wondered if Sherlock was a figment of her imagination.


**Figment**

One-Shot Prompt Drabble

_By: Sophie Quinn_

_Twitter: Quinnzical__

Molly Hooper often wondered if, perhaps, Sherlock Holmes was just a figment of her imagination.

She could recall, with startling clarity, the first moment she had ever met the man in the long dark coat with the unruly hair and stunning blue eyes. The way he swept into the morgue, nearly gliding down the hallways with no more than a casual glance to the bodies laid out on cold metal tables. Like a phantom out of the shadows, ethereal and far too beautiful to ever be real. She remember thinking then that there was very little chance that someone like _him_ could not be something she had created in her own fantasies.

His voice, breaking through the silence of the lower levels of the hospital, made her doubt his corporeal existence even further. It rumbled through her, sending tremors to the very core of her being, shivers across her skin at the sharpest of consonants and the sweetest of vowels. Something in the way his tongue caressed her name, calling across the vast space between them.

_Molly._

With boyish glee he would approach her in the middle of the night, looking as if he never needed a moment of rest to maintain his youthful features, eager to see what body parts she had stuck away in a jar for him to take home. Morbid little gifts of adoration from a solitary mortician to a solitary mad man. Tokens of affection in the form of disembodied eyes, swollen livers, deformed heart valves. It only took her a month to realize that the more unique the gift, the macabre and freakish the find, the brighter his eyes shone and the sweeter her name sounded on his lips.

_Molly. _

It was silly to think that he was something that she had just made up in the deep recesses of her subconscious. She knew him to be flesh and blood. On the rare occasion that he would lean in close to grab for something near her own hand, she could feel the heat radiating off of his body. She could feel his breath against her hair, smell the fading remains of his shampoo and deodorant. On the very, very rare occasion that his fingers would brush her own, and she would graze the pad of her thumb against his smooth, pale skin, Molly would allow herself just the briefest of moments to imagine more intimate things.

Sherlock, sitting at her kitchen table with the daily post laid out in front of him, a cup of coffee in one hand and a contented grin curving his lips. Sherlock, lying about on her sofa in nothing but a dressing gown, his long fingers resting over his bare stomach, shifting ever so slightly with the rise and fall of his own breathing. Sherlock, stretched out on her bed, completely naked, half asleep and drunk off the euphoria of a night of love making, purring her name in those deep, rumbling octaves.

"Molly." Sherlock said her name for the third time, looking up from the microscope in front of him with annoyance edging at his voice. "Molly, are you even listening?"

"Hm?" She blinked, glancing around rapidly to find her sleep deprived imaginings shattered by the cold reality surrounding her. "Yes. Yes, I..umm.. no. I'm sorry, Sherlock. I haven't been sleeping well, and there's a girl sick in my department so I am working my third..."

"I said, could you pass me that pen?"

"...shift.." Molly frowned slightly, pushing away the borderline erotic thoughts in her mind as she reached for the pen that was resting not a foot from his outstretched hand. His gaze dropped back to the minuscule object he was studying within the glow of the microscope, and she approached to hand him the pen with the strength of a thousand armies keeping her from leaning in further than necessary. His fingers brushed her own and her breath caught, a faint blush rising up along her cheeks as she turned rapidly to put distance between them. Though she said nothing, and he glanced up for only a second, she knew her biology had betrayed her.

"I don't need your help, Molly. You should go home, get some rest." He muttered, jotting down a few notes with one hand while he idly turned a dial on the machine with the other. There was another momentary glance. "You're flush. Getting sick. The lack of sleep won't help any and it's dreadful on your complexion."

She nodded, but still said nothing, the frown persistent on her thin lips.

There were some times when Molly Hooper thought that Sherlock Holmes was just a figment of her imagination, and then there were times like this one. All too common times like this, where the charming, dapper, dashingly kind, incredibly intelligent, and mysterious detective of her dreams became a cold, unfeeling, insulting, socially awkward, _idiot_ of her reality.


End file.
